Main Street bridge reopens, connecting downtown and northside

Drew McDonald carries a sandbag as he removes barriers in preparation for reopening the Main Street bridge on Monday near University of Houston Downtown. The bridge opened after 18 months of construction. Photo: Dug Begley/ Houston Chronicle

With a ceremonial head-butt from an alligator and cheers from University of Houston Downtown students, Metro officials opened the Main Street bridge to northbound traffic Monday after an 18-month closure.

“We’re going to see opportunity for not just UHD, but for the north side,” said university president William Flores.

During the opening celebration, UHD’s gator mascot led students through a paper banner marking the opening. Afterward, workers cleared detour signs from the lanes, enabling downtown drivers to cross White Oak bayou on a century-old bridge widened as part of the North Main rail line. The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County plans to start testing trains north of downtown this summer, interim CEO Tom Lambert said.

The line, linking UHD and the Northline Transit Center north of Loop 610, is expected to open next year. It’s one of three rail lines under construction.

Eight stops are planned north of UHD, with the trains following mostly Main and Fulton.

The focus Monday was moving vehicular traffic, and ending a detour through parking lots and along side streets that many businesses north of downtown blamed for their slumping sales.

Drivers said they were eager to have the connection restored. Elliot Evans, 26, said getting to the north side since the closure has been “a guessing game.”

“I’m a believer in (the rail projects),” Evans said. “But it’s been a long wait.”

Metro officials said when the detours began that work would take about 14 months. Monday officials insisted they still beat a subsequent construction estimate by a month.

“We know the emotional significance it has,” Metro chairman Gilbert Garcia said of the Main Street bridge.

6 Responses

The North Line’s opening has been postponed from this October until the New Year? Until WHICH New Year? Metro may SAY 2014, but Metro doesn’t seem to aspire to give us even a fraction anytime soon of what Dallas / Fort Worth / Plano already have:

DFW Plano already have over a hundred miles of rail. Houston still has just 8. Even with the expansion (which keeps getting delayed and delayed while Metro employees conveniently keep charging their lucrative paychecks at our expense), Houston will barely even have 40 miles of rail, if that much.

And wasn’t the November ’12 referendum issue regarding Metro worded so poorly that it suggests Metro conspired to screw it up so they could subsequently claim to have all sorts of undocumented popular support, enabling them to do more by fiat? Meanwhile they could blame delays on the referendum-related confusion.

Should Metro continue having a monopoly on bus routes? Why can’t companies like MegaBus.com get a chance to compete? Wouldn’t competitors be able to lay out new rail faster and more economically, too?

Metro is a disgrace. Metro is not going to build the University & Uptown light-rail lines where it’s the densest part the city, and Metro collects the most revenue in sales taxes from these two (2) areas. One of the lines that Metro is building now is not federally funded. (You paid for it!)

Last minute, Metro changed plans by building the East End line from BRT to LTR (extra $$$), $43 million to build the Harrisburg underpass to Magnolia Transit Center (about $23 million more than an overpass) and Metro is still spending money elsewhere. It has been 10 years since passing the 2003 light rail expansion plan referendum and nothing has been done to the University & Uptown light-rail lines. Spend, Spend, Spend .. Oh! We have no money. Shame on Metro.